Thousands of gallons of Whiskey poured down the drain in the UK makes for a bad cocktail!

Thousands of gallons of Whiskey poured down the drain in the UK makes for a bad cocktail!

RIONED has a professional interest in keeping the flow going. As the European leader in Drain and Sewer Cleaning Equipment we’re fascinated in what’s sent through the sewers, from restaurant fats and oils to the mystery of hundreds of tennis balls being flushed. So this story from was certainly of interest: thousands of liters of whisky flushed down the drain at a bottling plant in Dumbarton, Scotland! Instead of draining waste water, workers somehow flushed out Whisky. A lot of whisky! A Scottish water spokesman recognized that “Discharging large volumes of alcohol into the sewer network can have an adverse impact on waste water treatment processes…” We wonder if they provided a beer chaser!

Alcohol is poured down the sewers during prohibition days in the US. Photo via Dailymail.uk

It reminds us of all the alcohol poured down storm sewers during Prohibition in the US. It was 1919 when the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution banned the manufacture, transportation and sale of intoxicating liquors. The so called Noble Experiment was doomed to fail. Like the Charleston craze of the Roaring Twenties, the public was feverish about their liquor – and Prohibition was impossible to enforce with the thriving Bootlegging, speakeasies and crime. It was over in 1933, but not before millions of gallons of beer, wine, whiskey, and all sorts of liquors were poured down storm drains across the country.

What goes into storm drains is not treated and filtered. It flows into streams and lakes and ends up in the oceans. For those in the business of sewers and pipe clearing, what’s flushed and poured out can be a major safety hazard. It’s not usually Whiskey but a cocktail of foreign materials, including motor oils, old or expired drugs and frying oils. For safety’s sake as well as for our environment, watch what gets sent down the drain!